The Last Time
by Brendan Storm
Summary: James Grayson, younger brother of Mara and son to Dick and Barbara Grayson is growing up so fast. Forced to play the part of his deceased grandfather for his sister, alone because his girlfriend is off planet on a mission, he comes to terms with the situ


The Last Time  
  
JimmyVerse#3  
  
By Brendan Storm  
  
Rating R (Some scary moments, sibling rivalry, language, child abuse and general pissyness)  
  
Archiver's note: This is supposed to be #19 of Maraverse, not Jimmyverse, cause she didn't wanna write this one, just skip ahead to the #20 story Corporate Retaliation. I gave her grief, and she told me to do it. Then I was too slow and she posted #19 about the Prom because I am missing deadlines like crazy. Therefore this Jimmyverse story happens 2 weeks after the Prom and nearly two months before the car wreck in Corp.  
  
Author's note: Now I know why my father said never to volunteer unless you knew what you were in for.  
  
Day Twenty-Seven of the Masquerade.  
  
"What the hell WAS that? Is your mouth even CONNECTED to your brain? Or does it all just flow freely like Timmy on a candy binge?"  
  
Oh God. I hated every minute I was in the costume. There's something humbling about being the one hero you ever had other than your own parents. I cannot help that I had to wisecrack after a fight, it is in the Grayson bloodstream.  
  
"I'm going to set the tasers in the suit to shock you every time you say something idiotic, that was a bust and a take down. Not a comedy roast. I need them to think you're Batman, not Dana Carvey." The fight was the same every night. She needed better materiel, badly.  
  
"Oh Rayner can quip, but I can't?"  
  
"Rayner doesn't have a bat symbol across his chest. You wear the bat? You shut your mouth."  
  
"Effin Balius gets to quip, but not Dark and creepy." Familiar ground and only three days left. I couldn't wait till Dad and Crys got back from their deep space mission. I hated wondering how they were.  
  
"You wanna be a smart-ass, go find a ring."  
  
"Ask Teddy Ruxpin to make me one then." I growled under my breath.  
  
She continued the lecture. I could say it myself in six languages. The car needed a tune up; I could feel it listing to the right with her ego. There were three things that I seriously dug about the charade of being Him. First of all the car was unbelievably cool. Second Crys said I looked so sexy in the suit. Never tell Mara. Never, or I will seriously hurt someone. Third was the fact that If I stepped forward at just the right time, I could make grown men cry for their mommas.  
  
".dark and silent is a tool." I faded back into the lecture.  
  
"You are a tool." I said quietly.  
  
"Nighthawk had his mouth and he used it as a tool." She must not have heard me. "Batman has a different set of artillary. *I* am not a tool. I am your partner, and I'll kick your ass if you don't shut your damned hole." Ok she caught it. Unfortunately she said exactly the wrong thing, this time.  
  
"Nighthawk is dead, damn it. Don't start with me on that." I was starting to get pissed.  
  
"The point is, you're playing a different part. Sidekicks quip. BATMAN does not quip. The end."  
  
"The point is," I ground out between my teeth and staring at the HUD. "Grandfather had a fuckin sense of humor. He tolerated you, ice bitch."  
  
"I was his sense of humor. I told him what was funny and when it was funny." Now this was new, a whole new sense of megalomania. Mara had the funny bone of a fucking US Senator, i.e. none at all. "You'll abide by the same rule."  
  
"Yeah and Dad and Tim and Mom and Grampy didn't notice him being funny until after you got here. I'm so sure."  
  
"The only funnies he made before i showed up were picking on Superman's wardrobe. They should be cracks you're familiar with. People used to make them when mom still dressed you, mama's boy." Low blow. Bad form.  
  
"Was that before or after Alfred started dressing you?"  
  
"Bite me, momma's boy."  
  
"Hey at least she still claims me."  
  
"So afraid people're going to think you're uncool. Guess what? The bat is uncool. He scares the Justice League and he makes mooks wet themselves." I mentioned how cool that was, didn't I? "THAT is who batman is and for the next four days, that is who YOU are."  
  
"For the record that's three. And I'll have you know, dip sis, the bat is not uncool. He's extremely cool. He's so cool that when he sleeps, sheep count Him. Every girl wants him. They dig the car. It's a proven fact, ask Dinah. Now I will be your damn bat, but I will be HIM not your fucking image of him and if you try to deck me again I will put your ass down." I seriously was getting an ulcer from this.  
  
"You'll be sorry if you even try. Who the hell's running this show? You or me?" The crazy woman smiled at me from the passenger side of the car. "Who the hell did he give the city to? I know who Batman is."  
  
"Hmmm, I forget," I spat out. "I was bleeding out at the time."  
  
She stopped a moment and stared out the car window "Shut the fuck up."  
  
"It was funny though." I kept driving remembering the crack I'd made at the warehouse.  
  
"Shut up." Damn it, she shut down again. "You're never to talk to me about that ever again."  
  
"About what? Get your game face on, boss and talk to the commish... er, that Akins guy." I tilted my head indicating the signal.  
  
"Exactly." She replied, seething. Minutes later, we stashed the car and were on the roof of Police Headquarters. Akins had a case for us. She did all the talking and I just stood there, as usual. I looked nasty and dark. Five minutes went by and I shifted once. She turned and scowled at me, then kept discussing whatever it was they were discussing. Akins listened to her and looked at me.  
  
"What do you think, Batman?"  
  
I grunted and nodded once on Mara's signal. Did I mention I hated this crap? Fortunately Grandfather had been cultivating a nonverbal attitude toward this dork for years. Akins accepted the grunt and went back to talking with Robin. On cue, she asked something a boob could know and we disappeared.  
  
"You moved," she said as she caught up with me on the next rooftop.  
  
'I shifted feet! People do that now and again. There's this thing, its called blood circulation."  
  
"The Bat doesn't move."  
  
"Yep, scratched my nose too, he didn't notice."  
  
"I noticed and God noticed."  
  
"The bat doesn't move because you don't see him move." I quipped. "And God and grandfather are making protocols about what to do in case you show up, cause geez..."  
  
"You don't GET it?" She just scowled at me again. She was clocking at six scowls an hour "Do you?"  
  
"I don't WANT it," I said exasperated. "Remember this is a favor."  
  
When she goes on a rant she sort of forgets to listen. Again I thought she missed the back talk. "He doesn't move. He taught me how to not move. He doesn't laugh, he doesn't smile. He doesn't," I looked at her and didn't speak. "--didn't... shut up."  
  
"Well Dad taught me," I said quietly. "How to be flexible, and how to flow with shit and geez what the hell is that!" I fired off a line towards a disturbance at street level.  
  
Robin leapt behind me. I could hear her sigh. Extra points for making her angry, she may move to acceptance within the next century. Grief sucks. So does filling in for the best.  
  
"Jimmy, if you screw this up..."  
  
"Robin, kill the chatter." A gang of motorcycle riding clowns? "You take those two and I got the others." They called themselves Jokerz. They weren't funny. Robin stared and swallowed hard. "Robin." I ground out in my best impression. That threw her into action and I leapt into the fray alongside her.  
  
The gang was tormenting a young businessman. He looked like he might collapse, and if he did that; the wolves would be on him.  
  
Personal opinions about why I hate the job aside, crime fighting is, was and always will be a kick in the pants for me. There's nothing like it. That's why I had to quit. This is not a game. Batman and Robin flew down into the light and went to work.  
  
I'd taken down nine of them. That left her with the other four. I was probably being a little of a hog, but I could see what they both liked about going out and getting busy with some mooks. Especially these mooks.  
  
She was on the other side of the businessman's car. Next year's model, very nice. I heard the faint dings of flesh being thrown repeatedly against the side of the car. "Its not. fucking funny, you fucking clowns! It's not funny!"  
  
I leapt over the dash and grabbed her arm before she could slam him into the side door again. She brushed me off, and I saw the other three laying at her feet. "Who the hell do you think you are?" This last time, the driver's side window broke.  
  
I had to do it. Before something happened. "Robin!" I said in The Voice. "It's over. Leave him be."  
  
She frowned at the guy. A kid, really. My age. And then she decked him in the face, and that was the last of consciousness for him.  
  
"Robin, get in the car." I could tell she was upset. I didn't need her killing anyone before the police arrived.  
  
She took a few deep breaths, then stepped out of the sea of clowns. "So- sorry," she muttered. I'd never heard her apologize before for anything. Did she apologize to Him? "Going to the car." She split and jumped in the Car, and I was grateful. It had been eight years since that night for her, and it had been five and a half years since she'd really dealt with it. this was really her first encounter with these guys. I'd seen them in Bludhaven a few times, but they must be branching out. This was her first big run-in since all that stuff happened , and it hadn't surprised me she'd gone tripping off into that happy land known as 'excessive force'.  
  
I secured our friends, and then turned, going back to the vehicle. She was sitting in the passenger's seat, staring blankly out the windshield. Without thinking, I opened her door, and bent in to look at her. "Look. that one was a tough one. Are you ok?"  
  
Her face suddenly contorted into a blind rage, and her fist connected with my jaw before I could do anything. I staggered back before I could stop myself. I wasn't expecting it. I mean-I'd been nice and everything. Apparently the only thing the bitch understood was when I ordered her around as the Bat.  
  
I didn't have much time to think about it, though, because she flew out of the car to attack me again. The only thing the bitch understood was being smacked around, I swore. Did HE regularly have to beat sense into her? I grabbed her wrists as they flew at me and pulled them behind her back. "You fucking crazy bitch! I was trying to be CONSIDERATE and shit! You fucked up ho!"  
  
Her wrists dislodged from my hands and went for my neck and a loud, ephemeral growl erupted from her throat. Un-fucking-hinged.  
  
As much as I wanted to just beat the living hell out of her, I couldn't do it. She was my sister. I'd nearly killed her once, already. Unfortunately, she'd just gotten her fingers beneath the throat-guard in the cowl. My fist pulled back and I cracked her right in the eye. She snapped backwards and let go. Even with her mask-that was going to leave a nice black one.  
  
"Shit. Darth Robin strikes again," I muttered, scraping her off the ground. She was blessedly unconscious.  
  
I heard sirens, and I knew I couldn't hesitate. Taking the restraints off of her own belt, I secured her wrists behind her back, and then I took her belt off and threw it in the back. With my own restraints, I secured her feet. That's all I needed her to do was kick me in the head while I was driving. It wouldn't hold her, but it would slow her down. I knew how long it took her to get out of those things, so I knew exactly how long I had to pull her over and keep her from killing me. Crazy damned bitch!  
  
Something was going to change or I was walking that very day.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
Day Twenty-Eight of the Masquerade  
  
"Honey! We're home!" My father always sounded like a fifties dad when he came back from deep space missions. My mother squealed like a teenager, which is pretty funny if you think she's almost to her fifties by now. She keeps telling us she's thirty-six, but the only way someone can have me for a son and still be thirty six is if temporal physics were viable or if she'd had me when she was eighteen. I know for a fact that at eighteen she thought Dad was a dork kid in short pants.  
  
"Dick!" Yep there was the grunt and the kissing. I couldn't wait to have that same reunion with Frosty the icy babe. "What's wrong?" I looked out into the hallway at my dad who was holding mom and kissing her. Yech, old people sex. Someone was standing behind them, in the doorway.  
  
"Where's your son?"  
  
"What did he do this time?"  
  
"Well, it involves his girlfriend and a certain talk we've had recently and ."  
  
I wanted to be a comic when I grew up, you know, stand up. Tell jokes, be the next Carey, Williams or Fransisco. My problem was comedic timing. I haven't got it. I can deliver a line perfect and I can recite hundreds of sketches verbatim, but when it came to my own stuff I was just a klutz. The fates are funny like that. When I try, I bomb bad. When I just wander into a punch line, well.  
  
"Hey Dad," I interrupted as I came in from the living room. "How was your." I'm not sure what happened but when I woke up I had a great new shiner on my left eye and my mother was checking it.  
  
"You awake? I want to make sure you're alive and healthy for when I strangle you."  
  
"Huh? What happened?" I said. I knew my dad was fast, but I think I was punched.  
  
"Prom night. You forget something important?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Did I tell you to NOT have sex, James!?!" Dad was yelling through a closed door. I was still clueless. "Use your head meant the Big one Damn it!!! Roy is going to Die! I SHOULD HAVE ASKED CLARK!!!"  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Kristin's pregnant." Mom slapped the steak onto my eye a little hard. I'm not quite sure what happened after that, because I think I hyperventilated and fainted.  
  
When I woke up from that, she was standing there. She didn't look pregnant to me. She looked like she'd been crying, her hair was all frazzled, and she had an air cast on her ankle. She did not look pregnant.  
  
"You're, uh, you're mad at me too, aren't you." I'm a guy. It's a super psychic ability to say just the wrong thing at the right time. This stupidity, which spilled from my orifice, started her crying again and she ran to me and held me. Held me about the throat, I might add. At this point I just let her. If she wanted to, I guess she had every right.  
  
When the cry ran out, and her grip relaxed, she snuggled with me and looked into my eyes. Something looked a little panicked, but there was something else. There was still love. I hadn't ruined her life or done anything to her. It was not the end of the world. It had just happened.  
  
Looking back I realize that condoms have a half life and changing the one in the wallet every three months would have been something Uncle Roy would find out later that he should have told me about. I made a mental note to kill him severely later, after dad finished killing him.  
  
"I love you." I whispered into her hair as we lie there. She held me about the waist now, much more comfortable. She kissed me.  
  
Comedic timing, I couldn't do it on purpose, but by God life had it down cold. I kissed her again and the tears started again as she whispered it back to me, not one beat later the page came to patrol again. Two more days left.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
The cave was dark and the practice mats were dirty. It looked like Alfred hadn't been down here since before. Well since before Mara moved in. There was a cot by the car. She was sitting in the throne chair in front of the computer.  
  
"Don't you have a home?" I said shakily. This wasn't a great time to be objective and all Justicy.  
  
"You're late."  
  
"Yeah." I was quiet. "They're back. The universe is safe till next Tuesday." I wish she was a normal sister. Telling her my secrets would be very helpful right now. Somehow I think she wouldn't get it.  
  
"Irrelevant. We have work to do. I've read your after action report. You've met these Jokerz before."  
  
"Observant. Yeah, they stared appearing about a year ago in the 'Haven near the ZeeMores. Just a local gang I thought."  
  
"You were wrong again. Akins gave me a case about a new tag showing up on organized hits last night before the incident."  
  
"The incident, is that what you're calling that sudden fit of Arkham-like rage? I swear to God Mara, something's got to change."  
  
"I'm glad you realize. We're late, go change."  
  
"No. We need to talk. Things are happening that I ." I had to tell her. She needed to know. Tim wouldn't let anything happen to his. wow, it just hit me there. I was going to be a father. "I have some new responsibilities.."  
  
"Talk later," she growled. "Change now."  
  
"No, talk now. Look I can't do this anymore unless you're willing to accept some change."  
  
"Change? There can be no change. You have to be Batman, not some new vigilante. Batman is established. He has routines. No change."  
  
"No, Darth Robin. You're going to have to be the one to change if you want to continue this masquerade."  
  
"What did you call me?"  
  
"You heard me, Darth. I'm not going to take this from you anymore. If you want this to continue, you have to be the one to accept some changes." I said it quietly and clearly, the words echoed in the darkness.  
  
"You will take whatever it takes, damn it. Let's go." She said rising from her chair and walking to me.  
  
The bats were getting restless and the sun outside had set. "I warned you yesterday that if you tried to bully me you would be stopped. You either listen to me or."  
  
"Shut up. Put on the suit, we have to go."  
  
"No."  
  
"Damn it!" She raised her voice. "PUT THAT ON NOW!!!"  
  
"No." That finally got her so mad she tried to kick me. She telegraphed it so loudly I could tell she was losing it. Her jump kick was so obvious that I felt like I was in one of those bullet time scenes. I caught her leg and blocked her second as she twisted to kick me in the face. I threw her against a wall and she flipped over and back in an instant.  
  
"NOW! FUCKING SHIT. SNOT NOSED GOOD FOR NOTHING CLOWN. YOU CAN'T QUIT! YOU OWE ME! PUT. THAT. ON. NOW!" Her punches were wild and all over the place. I think he would have been proud at how much I had learned from him. I blocked everything she threw at me. She was screaming incoherently at me by this time.  
  
I did the leg sweep and take down I had used on the school bully. The real Mara would have seen it, stopped it and taken my arm off. Darth Robin hit the cave floor with a dull thud. I held her down as she screamed a primal rage. She struggled in my grasp and I just kept her pinned. I stared her in the eyes; they were cold, hard and frightening. She tried to bite me and I closed my eyes sadly and head butted her into the floor again.  
  
I stood and walked back to the stairs. The backpack containing the suit hung on the rail. She sat up as I pulled it out of my pack and flung it into the crack that still held the penny. She cried out "No!" as I let go of the cowl and it fell into the watery darkness.  
  
"It's over, Mara. I don't have time for this anymore. Don't get back up." I walked up the stairs and out of her life, but not before I heard something that chilled me to the bone.  
  
She was still screaming into the darkness when I closed the clock. Still crying out "No! You promised! You can't leave me. No! Don't leave me!" I don't know if she was screaming at me or at the suit.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
I climbed out of my car and looked up at Kristin's house. I'd been to her place only a handful of times; usually we met at Happy Harbor or somewhere in Bludhaven. I'd already met her folks, hundreds of times. They loved me like a, well, like a potential son in law. She'd just never really wanted to hang at her place. She kept a room at YJ hq, like Uncle Roy had for years with Lian. I got the feeling that everything that was truly "her" was there, not at this place.  
  
She was sitting there on the porch swing with a book. I sat next to her quietly.  
  
"You look awful." She told me.  
  
"Gee, thanks. I'm now an ex-vigilante."  
  
"And a father. Great how things happen in threes isn't it?"  
  
"Frosty, honey, that's just two." I felt a bout of hyperventilation coming on. I swallowed and made myself take a deep breath.  
  
"I know." She said as she kissed me. "Does Mara know?"  
  
"Nope. She was a little too unhinged for me to tell her when I left."  
  
"Pretty bad, huh."  
  
"Statement of the depths, my love. Under statement doesn't do it justice. Deeper than simply an under. She needs psychiatric help. She needs to be taken away from that cave and beaten to a pulp by reality until she finally gives the code word and is released from her kinky bondage scene with whatever alternate reality she's in where Grandfather is still there and making her apologize for shit." I took a breath after my rant. Yep, an ulcer.  
  
"How serious were you about what you said at the prom?"  
  
"About what part? Being the luckiest man in the world?"  
  
"No, stupid. About being with me forever? Was that just Bat head games?"  
  
"Crys, I love you. Nothing will change that, come hell high water, Apokolips and Terminus. I don't care if our kid ends up with bat wings and flies by farting into the wind. I will love you. I was serious about planning my life with you."  
  
"I know. I just had to hear it. My stuff is at your place. My parents kicked me out. Something about allowing this to happen so now you can support me. Happy birthday, Lover."  
  
"Threes huh." I sighed. I had to remember that rule. "When did this happen?"  
  
"You were unconscious when your mom said I could move in with you."  
  
"Wait, wait. my mother was ok with that? My mother, the one who wouldn't let either of us kids have sleepovers with any gender? The one who, when friends call, uses the voice masker to reply in a Chinese accent that 'He don live here no mo' is letting you move in?"  
  
"Something about no grandchild of hers growing up in an environment like my folks."  
  
"Ah, yes window box gardeners."  
  
"Exactly, then she began rubbing her hands together and talking about rocking horses and spoiling babies rotten."  
  
"Well, looks like the Zoloft is working. Guess she should cut back on the drugs."  
  
She nodded and continued. "The pregnancy I found out about on the mission. Your dad found out first actually. I twisted my ankle." I had noticed that. "The medical scanner picked it up on the way home. When you do something, you just don't play around, lover. It's twins."  
  
"I'm sorry?" I said quietly. "No wait. I'm not. If it had to happen now, then we're the right two people to do it. I love you so much; I already know we're getting married. Sooner now, but it changes nothing."  
  
"Hold the fort, ace. Married?" She looked a little panicked.  
  
"Well, you know I was gonna ask you after college. When I could support us non-robin hood style. I just thought."  
  
"Ah, so now we're thinking, Lover." She kissed me softly. "I know and I do. Dad, he told me I could call him that now, Well, he said we should be together and offered to put up an apartment for us over the garage." She stopped. "I thought you had protocols for this."  
  
"Great, now they want me to be all bat." I threw my hands up in the air and then embraced her. My brain was still trying to process. "You do?"  
  
"I do."  
  
"And you're staying with me? I get a cot on the floor right?"  
  
"Nope. Apparently they decided something about barn doors and horses being outside, so we're official."  
  
"Wow." Come on brain. Catch up. "No use closing the barn door, yeah, I got it."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Old people. There's no use closing the barn door after the horses have run off. Ok. The one protocol I had for this, do not look at me like that." She was still looking at me like that. I was trained by my father. Protocols and action plans are very important. "As I was saying, my dorm room becomes campus housing is all. There are actually a high percentage of college families. Shoot we could even be RHA's."  
  
"Huh?" Either I was rambling or she was tracking as well as I was by this point.  
  
"Resident Housing Assistants. They'd pay us a salary to live in a dorm and keep control of freshmen."  
  
"Thirty clones of Roy?"  
  
"Ok, we could just live in campus apartments. That can come from grant money. Course that usually has thirty foreign clones of Roy, but they'd be interesting."  
  
"Waaaa, Ricky!!!!" She deadpanned.  
  
"Lucy you got some 'splainin to do." I did in accent. "Or I could chuck it all and we'd live in the new apartment above my folks' garage and I'd commute to Gotham U."  
  
"We'll see." She snuggled against me and I saw a small tear sparkle in the moonlight. "Jimmy?"  
  
"Yeah, Frosty."  
  
"Take me home."  
  
"As you wish." We kissed and I did.  
  
End. for now. 


End file.
